My status on a networking site on the morning of Eden Garden Test match read “seems like SRT will get it today” which got changed to “And the wait continues” for obvious reasons. Apart from a change in my status Sachin Tendulkar’s dismissal at 38 also prompted one of my colleagues to say that Sachin is getting old that’s why he is making us WAIT so much for that ” Hundredth Hundred” . While coming back in the evening a radio jockey who may or may not have played cricket ever in his life dedicated a hindi classic ” Inteha ho gayee intezaar ki ” (it has been a cumbesome wait ) His histrionics on the show further proved that he is part of that ever growing number who are WAITING for Mr Tendulkar to reach another milestone.
Who are these people and why are they waiting is something even they don’t know. It is not as if they are sacrificing something for that “Hundredth Hundred”. They still continue to eat or drink normally, they still watch their favorite Saas Bahu serial or reality shows on the telly, the males in this club still leave the toilet seat up after they are done and the female ones continue to patronize anything remotely associated with make up. So if Sachin Tendulkar not been able to score a hundred is not changing their lives then I doubt if any damn thing will be altered if he does end up scoring more then 99 runs in one single innings. So why can’t they all shut up and stop attaching a time frame to it and if they really are so desperate to wait for some thing then trust me there is no paucity of options. They can always wait for Manmohan Singh to speak up and digvijay singh to shut up, they can wait for Govinda to stop acting and for Johny boy to start doing it, they can wait for Baba Ramdev to concentrate on Meditation and for Rahul Gandhi to come clean on his education,they can wait for sallu bhai to get married and Hugh Hefner not to get married.
The options are endless. But still they rather we (since yours truly is included in that list too) want to wait for something which is not actually important for the man himself but he is made to believe as if his life depends on it. All this is not new to the little man. Unfortunately he has been witnessing this for the last twenty years. A brainless scrutinizing of the way he plays his cricket is perhaps the only “timepass” of the world which has the word obsession attached to it. If he doesn’t score he is ridiculed, if he scores and India looses he is still the culprit, if he scores and India wins its taken for granted. So what should he do. Should he just go ahead and do the needful,get that damn hundred and get that monkey off his back. But, It would change zilch because we have lots of monkeys and langoors to put on his back. I don’t think any of us has ever given a thought to what goes in his mind. Everyone keeps on talking about the weight of expectations on his shoulders but how much that WEIGHT is, no one is really bothered. No wonder any “off the field footage” of Sachin in this series had him wearing dark glasses covering his eyes and big headphones protecting his ears. ” Kya boss ? When is it happening then ?? I guess
Can he walk away from that hundred??
I just feel if Mr Tendulkar can ever get annoyed by this over extra concern that too for something which he has already done 99 times in international cricket. What could he do to show his anger and give it back to us. How about not getting it. Just don’t get it and keep on delaying it for as long as he can. So much so that people stop expecting. Wishful thinking I know but it will be fun. May be a day will pass by when not a single status message or a tweet will have anything to do with 100th ton.
